It is the object only of war that makes it honorable.And if there was ever a just war since the world began, it is this in which America is now engaged.She invaded no land of yours.She hired no mercenaries to burn your towns, nor Indians to massacre their inhabitants.She wanted nothing from you, and was indebted for nothing to you: and thus circumstanced, her defence is honorable and her prosperity is certain.
Yet it is not on the justice only, but likewise on the importance of this cause that I ground my seeming enthusiastical confidence of our success.The vast extension of America makes her of too much value in the scale of Providence, to be cast like a pearl before swine, at the feet of an European island; and of much less consequence would it be that Britain were sunk in the sea than that America should miscarry.There has been such a chain of extraordinary events in the discovery of this country at first, in the peopling and planting it afterwards, in the rearing and nursing it to its present state, and in the protection of it through the present war, that no man can doubt, but Providence has some nobler end to accomplish than the gratification of the petty elector of Hanover, or the ignorant and insignificant king of Britain.
As the blood of the martyrs has been the seed of the Christian church, so the political persecutions of England will and have already enriched America with industry, experience, union, and importance.
Before the present era she was a mere chaos of uncemented colonies, individually exposed to the ravages of the Indians and the invasion of any power that Britain should be at war with.She had nothing that she could call her own.Her felicity depended upon accident.The convulsions of Europe might have thrown her from one conqueror to another, till she had been the slave of all, and ruined by every one; for until she had spirit enough to become her own master, there was no knowing to which master she should belong.That period, thank God, is past, and she is no longer the dependent, disunited colonies of Britain, but the independent and United States of America, knowing no master but heaven and herself.You, or your king, may call this "delusion," "rebellion," or what name you please.To us it is perfectly indifferent.The issue will determine the character, and time will give it a name as lasting as his own.
You have now, sir, tried the fate of three campaigns, and can fully declare to England, that nothing is to be got on your part, but blows and broken bones, and nothing on hers but waste of trade and credit, and an increase of poverty and taxes.You are now only where you might have been two years ago, without the loss of a single ship, and yet not a step more forward towards the conquest of the continent; because, as I have already hinted, "an army in a city can never be a conquering army." The full amount of your losses, since the beginning of the war, exceeds twenty thousand men, besides millions of treasure, for which you have nothing in exchange.Our expenses, though great, are circulated within ourselves.Yours is a direct sinking of money, and that from both ends at once; first, in hiring troops out of the nation, and in paying them afterwards, because the money in neither case can return to Britain.We are already in possession of the prize, you only in pursuit of it.To us it is a real treasure, to you it would be only an empty triumph.Our expenses will repay themselves with tenfold interest, while yours entail upon you everlasting poverty.
Take a review, sir, of the ground which you have gone over, and let it teach you policy, if it cannot honesty.You stand but on a very tottering foundation.A change of the ministry in England may probably bring your measures into question, and your head to the block.
Clive, with all his successes, had some difficulty in escaping, and yours being all a war of losses, will afford you less pretensions, and your enemies more grounds for impeachment.
Go home, sir, and endeavor to save the remains of your ruined country, by a just representation of the madness of her measures.Afew moments, well applied, may yet preserve her from political destruction.I am not one of those who wish to see Europe in a flame, because I am persuaded that such an event will not shorten the war.The rupture, at present, is confined between the two powers of America and England.England finds that she cannot conquer America, and America has no wish to conquer England.You are fighting for what you can never obtain, and we defending what we never mean to part with.A few words, therefore, settle the bargain.Let England mind her own business and we will mind ours.Govern yourselves, and we will govern ourselves.You may then trade where you please unmolested by us, and we will trade where we please unmolested by you; and such articles as we can purchase of each other better than elsewhere may be mutually done.If it were possible that you could carry on the war for twenty years you must still come to this point at last, or worse, and the sooner you think of it the better it will be for you.
My official situation enables me to know the repeated insults which Britain is obliged to put up with from foreign powers, and the wretched shifts that she is driven to, to gloss them over.Her reduced strength and exhausted coffers in a three years' war with America, has given a powerful superiority to France and Spain.She is not now a match for them.But if neither councils can prevail on her to think, nor sufferings awaken her to reason, she must e'en go on, till the honor of England becomes a proverb of contempt, and Europe dub her the Land of Fools.
